Friday, November 9, 2012

Immortals

Where there are swords, there must also be sandals. Not
really, but they do enjoy each other’s company quite often. In
Immortals they not only hang out together once again, they
have many more of the usual suspects with them: chain mail, oracles,
prophecies, and of course, immortals. Oh, I almost forgot there has to be a magical
weapon. In this case it is The Epirus Bow.

Let’s back up a bit. Many moons ago, the gods defeated the
titans at war. Instead of killing their enemies, the gods banished the titans
to a special cage deep within the bowels of a Greek village where they are to
spend eternity in a state of suspended animation. Sigh. This is where The
Epirus Bow comes in. Whoever possesses it can use it to free the titans and
wreak havoc on the world. Inexplicably, the gods don’t keep nor attempt to
destroy this bow. The gods must be crazy.

Fast forward a few years. Unsurprisingly, the tyrannical
King Hyperion (Rourke) is busy turning over every stone he comes across looking
for said bow as part of his master plan…wait for it…wait for it…to rule the
world! Muahahaha…ahem, sorry. In the process, he kills lots of people just to
make sure we know how evil he is. Many of these are his own soldiers and mostly
for no more reason than I’ve already given. That’s got to be bad for the
troops’ morale, no?

Since every villain must contend with a hero, we have
Theseus (Cavill). He’s a peasant who takes care of his mom and pals around with
an old man (Hurt) whom he doesn’t realize is Zeus (Evans) in disguise. Pretty
early on, Zeus comes right out and tells us Theseus is the only person who can stop
King Hyperion. Of course, the gods could but Zeus forbids them from getting
involved in human affairs. That whole thing gets darn messy, but I digress. The
virgin oracle we can’t believe is a virgin is played by the almost impossibly
beautiful (in my opinion) Freida Pinto. Also early on, she “sees” that
Theseus will indeed get his hands on The Epirus Bow. So there, now you don’t
have to watch this crap. Hmmm. Since we are in Ancient Greece I’ll say it Olde
English (wait…what?). This crap, thou mustn’t watcheth.

If you couldn’t tell already, I hateth this movie.
Immortals is aggressively dumb without the good sense to
not take itself so seriously. Nearly every action any character makes can be
summed up by one word: stupid. It also breaks its own rules several times. This
is noticeable mostly because the film itself makes a big deal out of these
rules. Save for a couple of brief instances, it lacks the visual splendor of
300 or even the Clash of the Titans
remake so we can’t even distract ourselves with shiny objects other than Mickey
Rourke’s ridiculous looking headgear. The final, meant to be spectacular,
battle involving the cgi titans is underwhelming. The Epirus Bow isn’t all it’s
cracked up to be, either. It’s a bow that supplies its own arrows which is
nice, but after taking the one shot to free the titans, it’s still just a bow
and arrow.

Immortals wants to an epic but just
comes across as hokey. Despite his helmets, Mickey Rourke is awesome as always
and does all he can with a role requiring little more of him than being sweaty
and stomping around the set. John Hurt also fares well. As our hero, Henry
Cavill is just ho-hum, though he certainly looks the part (or for Superman, the
part which he’ll use to soar into theaters next summer). Freida Pinto is
absolutely drop dead gorgeous, just in case I didn’t make that clear.
Unfortunately, the amount of drool that escapes my hanging bottom lip whenever
she is on screen isn’t nearly enough for me to recommend this.